Yeah, the original "Kiss From a Rose" is from "Batman Forever." I'd forgotten that. Last night, on "American Idol," the theme was songs from movies, and with one exception — "Mrs. Robinson" — I had no feeling for what the movie supposedly was. I'd completely lost track of "Kiss From a Rose" being Batman-related. Anyway, Lee Dewyze did that song last night and it seemed pretty bad to me.

Because the first metaphor suffered from the fact that the black sabbath song was at least about the character. So a better metaphor is that pretending seal's song was from 'batman forever" is like pretending that Ac/DC's song "Thunderstruck" was from Iron Man II.

Gee, something happened to Idol this year. They no longer have any entertainment coming from the judges except Ellen, who has no credibility as a song critic. Jackson is phoning it in, is walled off from the other two judges that know something. And Cowell and Kara give off a vibe that they just hate being on this awful show, wouldn't suffer it if they weren't being paid. And blatantly pimp and exert favortism for the 3 contestants that curiously, their side contract allows them to make money off producing the records of.

That and AI's rigged voting system insured a Top 5 of the most boring, personality deficient Idol Finalists ever assembled.

While the ones the average viewer (the ones with lives who don't text vote 800 times after a show)the ones they liked who were attractive and interesting and very entertaining - were undermined. Most notably Alex Lambert, Didi Ben-Ami, Tim Urban. With Siobhan the glassblower in a whole separate class of her own...were targeted for having their confidence destroyed, songs pressed on them at producer's insistances then publicly condemned by judges as poor song selection, then being eliminated.

Ratings are way down.

Ha! Ha! Go figure!

Judges and a connected few producers stand to make a couple 100K each on the side from a Crystal or Lee deal AFTER the shows end. They saw no money in the targeted ones in the immediate future - even Siobhan Magnus who may be a star in whatever the unicorns and muses in her head steer her to eventually....And the show itself loses 10s of millions, maybe even 100s of millions if they side-deal shenanigans put the very show in jeopardy.

It is not that TV Execs are rocket scientists. These are the ones that set up the Leno-Conan Obrien fiasco. Thought that paying Ellen who knows nothing about song critiquing was stunt casting genius worth a 5-year 25 million contract, and who gave an Idol MC with substance abuse/emotional issues a 3-year 15 million dollar contract.

Now they are said to be highly interested in stunt casting Elton John as a famous pissy English Queen. Who in the past accused the show of being racist for tossing out a black female contestant he took a fancy to. (the year another black woman won their stupid title)

I do have to admit that Ellen is a lot funnier than I gave her credit for and comes up with some great one-liners. She doesn't know jack shit about music but most of the people voting don't know anythning either. The ones that do like Simon and Kara are insufferable pricks. So maybe musical knowledge is not all that important in a popularity contest.